I am a professor and endowed professor at the University of Houston where I founded and direct the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and head the graduate program in space architecture. My background deals extensively with research, planning and design of habitats, structures and other support systems for applications in space and extreme environments on Earth. I have recently written a new book titled "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax". It can be previewed and ordered at www.climateofcorruption.com. Additional information about my book and views can be found on my YouTube address: http://www.youtube.com/climateofcorruption.

Gullible Warming: A Contrived Crisis That Is Too Good To Waste

Whew, it has really been hot lately…along with all those unprecedented droughts and storms! How can there be any lingering doubt about global warming? Right? So isn’t it a really good thing that, as Ryan Lizza reported in a June New Yorker article, “The president has said that the most important policy he could address in his second term of office is climate change”? In other words, this means he will further energize his EPA’s war on fossil energy, and double-down on his “green energy” subsidy agenda. If this doesn’t help to fix the economy, that priority will just have to wait.

Premised upon recent weather in some U.S. regions, the global warming crisis narrative has been driving lots of media traffic. For example, an Investor’s Business Daily Op/Ed piece by Eugene Robinson titled “Feeling the Heat: It’s Too Hot to Be a Global Warming Skeptic” notes that “…the nation’s capital and its suburbs are in post-apocalypse mode. About one-fourth of all households have no electricity, the legacy of an unprecedented [that word again] assault by violent thunderstorms…” He went on to say: ”Yes, it’s always hot here in summer. Yes, we always have thunderstorms-but never like these.”

Robinson offered a sensible disclaimer admitting that no one extreme weather event can be definitively blamed on climate change, while also taking issue with those who dismiss climate change as a “figment of scientist’s imagination, or even as a crypto-socialist one-worldish plot to take away our God-given SUVs” as “the data are beginning to add up.”

Fair enough. I agree that anyone who thinks climate change is illusory probably isn’t intellectually qualified for a license allowing them to drive an SUV, or any other motor vehicle that will outpace a riding lawnmower for that matter. And as for any “crypto-socialist one-worldish plot” to take away our choice to own one, that won’t be necessary. Imposition of the Obama administration’s radical new automotive CAFÉ standards will take care of that right here within our own government, avoiding any need to depend upon the U.N. for this.

But regarding that “data adding up” to support a war against fossil fuels under a man-made climate crisis banner…well, maybe that is something that warrants a bit more attention.

Mr. Robinson supported his reasoning by citing a NOAA statement that “the past winter was the fourth-warmest in the United States since record-keeping began in 1895”, along with NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA-GISS) surface temperature reports that indicate “nine out of the warmest 10 years on record have occurred since 2000”.

So to begin, let’s consider the first statement from a global warming perspective (because that’s what “global” really means). That warm 2011/2012 U.S. winter (which accounts for about 1.5% of the Earth’s surface), would certainly have been a very welcome difference from what much of world experienced. A European cold spell killed more than 500. More than 140 perished in the Ukraine, along with hundreds of others in France, Serbia and the Czech Republic. Europe’s 2,860-kilometer Danube River that is crucial for transport, power, industry and fishing froze over, as did nearly all rivers in the Balkans. More than 130 villages in Bulgaria went without electricity.

Closer to those of us in the lower forty-eight, Fairbanks, Alaska reported the coldest January temperatures since 1971, reaching -24º F. The coldest January average temperature there occurred in 1906 (-36.4º F).

Just like its former governor, Alaska has continued to go rogue. After experiencing its record-breaking cold winter, the state is now reported to have one of its coldest Julys, averaging 53 degrees F during the beginning of the month, about 12 degrees below average. The National Weather Service predicts this will soon change. If so, some will undoubtedly point to this as even more evidence of an imminent global warming disaster.

And what about the statement claiming that nine out of ten warmest years occurred since 2000? According to an article posted in the UK’s Daily Mail, recent readings taken from more than 30,000 measuring stations that were quietly released by the U.K.’s Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit show that world temperatures haven’t warmed over the past 15 years.

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